Kings have their hashish; hippies have their weed. I have my anime, and you, the blog-reader, probably have your anime too. Just like hashish and weed have different varieties, we all have our choice, our cocktails of anime as well.
What’s different, however, from hashish or weed, or even cigarettes, is that anime is not damaging to your physical self (some bloggers at #animenano, however, beg to differ), and oftentimes, when one watches good anime, one improves his understanding and depth perception of the human world, because the characterization in anime are anthropomorphic projects and reflections of humanity and human nature itself.
It’s an addiction, if not only something viewed during free time, that could compare with reading books to deepen one’s knowledge and wisdom. Just as reading books improves a lot about a person (except perhaps his sociability, but the same goes with anime), anime, when chosen carefully and viewed moderately (excessively), will probably sharpen and congeal our often inconstant and immelmanning view of humanity, to something akin to a scalpel. This scalpel of insight, then, will slowly extirpate all remnants of idiocy from the anime-viewer and book-reader (unless one still reads the Hardy Boys or watches anime like Gundoh Musashi or Naikaku Kenryoku Hanzai Kyosei Torishimarikan Zaizen Jotaro).
Although tragedy and masterpiece often occur together, sadness is only a small price to pay to deepen one’s view of the world after watching different instances of it in different illusionary worlds. This is the same when watching excellent anime like Honey and Clover or reading a book like Crime and Punishment, or The Master and Margarita, as wintermoon mentioned. The only problem is, one needs to expend a lot of energy when reading, so let’s all just watch anime and have fun with its nuances. 
July 22, 2006 at 7:46 pm
I prefer reading anyway.
July 22, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Of course it’s a learning experience. I still like my pulp, but I find myself getting further and further out of touch with the common line. Almost everything I watch is freakishly unpopular, or simply old. I have great stock in history, so I want to see where things came from and … I can’t explain Kiba.
July 22, 2006 at 9:06 pm
While I have always read a large bulk of novels, anime was the first time I actually learnt to express an interest in human emotions and relationships. Since starting to watch, I’ve been able to read more into characters and their feelings in any media than I could before. In that way, anime serves as a medium of education for me.
July 23, 2006 at 6:04 am
well, i was a professional reader (i work at a bookshop, worked at a library and do translations) but since i found anime – the 1st was FLCL – i haven’t been reading as much… i don’t miss it, tough. anime is very fulfilling.
July 24, 2006 at 4:05 am
hear hear.
July 24, 2006 at 9:55 am
I like the best of both worlds, in all honesty. You can’t watch anime (convieniently) on an hour long bus ride to/from school, but you can read something interesting. (Like “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”, by Haruki Murakami [/plug])
However, sitting at your desk and indulging in some anime is a completely different experience altogether, so I can’t group them, and put them on the same page.
July 24, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Indeed. I grew up reading more books than watching TV, so anime (and manga) was a pleasant discovery for me (I only got into it during college). It’s another storytelling medium, and then some. I’m always amazed at how anime can do a great job of covering all sorts of things under the sun, from real-life issues to the bizarre.
Glad you’re more than familiar with M&M. I found I couldn’t really read the classic Russian authors (too heavy), so I settled quite happily with Bulgakov. ;p
July 24, 2006 at 7:56 pm
I like this one.
“when chosen carefully and viewed moderately (excessively), will probably sharpen and congeal our often inconstant and immelmanning view of humanity, to something akin to a scalpel.”
haha.But the thing is that the beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.And the ero lies in the eyes of the beholder too.We need to filter our eyes to keep away from some dust during the showtime.If there is Miracle happened to me,I wish to go back to the first day I started watching anime.
July 24, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Aye!
Experiencing works of culture is a great way I revitalize my perspectives. The themes present in anime/manga are often new or different from the themes I’ve seen anywhere else (like “Death Note”).
The only way anime inhibits me is, I’ve discovered, that since the medium contains themes which I find personally important, it satisfies my need to experience those themes, and so leaves me with less of a desire to write (and what I write should contain a much more pure representation of the themes I find important, of course).